Life After Life

The new novel by the number one bestselling author.

'Merging family saga with a fluid sense of time and an extraordinarily vivid sense of history at its most human level. A dizzying and dazzling tour de force' Daily MailWINNER OF THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD: the acclaimed number one bestselling novel.What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?

During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath.

During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale.

What if there were second chances? And third chances? In fact an infinite number of chances to live your life? Would you eventually be able to save the world from its own inevitable destiny? And would you even want to?

Life After Life follows Ursula Todd as she lives through the turbulent events of the last century again and again. With wit and compassion, Kate Atkinson finds warmth even in life’s bleakest moments, and shows an extraordinary ability to evoke the past. Here she is at her most profound and inventive, in a novel that celebrates the best and worst of ourselves.

Reviews

“
Kate Atkinson’s new novel is a box of delights. Ingenious in construction, indefatigably entertaining, it grips the reader’s imagination on the first page and never lets go. If you wish to be moved and astonished, read it. And if you want to give a dazzling present, buy it for your friends.
”

Gillian Flynn,no1 New York Times author of Gone Girl, and Sharp Objects

“
Truly brilliant...Think of Audrey Niffenegger's The TimeTraveler's Wife or David Nicholl's One Day...[or] Martin Amis's Times Arrow, his rewinding of the Holocaust that was shortlisted for the Booker. Life After Life should have the popular success of the former and deserves to win prizes, too. It has that kind of thrill to it, of an already much-loved novelist taking a leap, and breaking through to the next level...This is a rare book that you want, Ursula-like, to start again the minute you have finished.
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Helen Rumbelow, The Times

“
What makes Atkinson an exceptional writer – and this is her most ambitious and most gripping work to date – is that she does so with an emotional delicacy and understanding that transcend experiment or playfulness. Life After Life gives us a heroine whose fictional underpinning is permanently exposed, whose artificial status is never in doubt; and yet one who feels painfully, horribly real to us.
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Alex Clark, Guardian

“
Merging family saga with a fluid sense of time and an extraordinarily vivid sense of history at its most human level. A dizzying and dazzling tour de force.
”

Amber Pearson, Daily Mail

“
Deliriously inventive, sharply imagined and ultimately affecting...The scenes set in Blitz-stricken London will stay with me forever...Atkinson has written something that amounts to so much more than the sum of its (very many) parts. It almost seems to imply that there are new and mysterious things to feel and say about the nature of life and death, the passing of time, fate and possibility.. . [a]magnificently tender and humane novel.
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Julie Myerson, Observer

“
Brilliant...more than just a terrific story about the impact of one existence on another. Atkinson can knock the socks off any rival in terms of skill and style...The tour de force of the book, though, is Atkinson's recreation of the Blitz...unputdownable
”

Evening Standard

“
Absolutely brilliant...it reminded me a bit of her first book Behind the Scenes at the Museum, which is one of my most favourite books ever.
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Marian Keyes (newsletter)

“
Stunned with tiredness thanks to Kate Atkinson's LIFE AFTER LIFE. Couldn't stop reading. Terrific novel, may be her best yet. So enthralling, so well written, so beautifully constructed. Really, I can't fault it. Will be one of my books of the year.
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Val McDermid (Twitter)

“
World events, reimagined characters and second chances told with warmth, wit and consummate skill.
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Fanny Blake, Woman & Home

“
Startlingly brilliant...endlessly rich
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James Walton, Reader's Digest

“
Life After Life is to be applauded for its inventiveness, and for reminding us of lives vanished without trace or memory in the waste and monstrosity of war.
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Literary Review

“
Atkinson, like Audrey Niffenegger before her with the similarly ambitious The Time Traveller's Wife, is a confident enough writer to bear her high concept along well above water level
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Scotsman

“
Atkinson's great skill is in portraying the exquisite tapestry of [life] with warmth, humour and immense humanity.
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Yorkshire Post

“
one of the most innovative, pacy plots of any recent novel
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Psychologies Magazine

“
Playful, intelligent and beguiling...Astoundingly accomplished
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Marie Claire

“
A profound read that finds light in the darkest times
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Glamour Magazine

“
If you enjoyed The Time Traveller's Wife, you will love this inventive fantasy from the author of the Jackson Brodie series...marvel at Atkinson's skill in carrying off this absorbing feat of imagination.
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Sunday Mirror

“
Atkinson's achievement is to convince the reader that being disorientated about exactly what has happened so far is acceptable and enjoyable...deftly constructed...The innovative narrative structure of Life After Life reasserts the best there is to hope for in human existence.
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Times Literary Supplement

“
Hilary Mantel, a rival for the Women's Prize, once said that Atkinson "delivers to the populace its jokes and its tragedies as efficiently as Dickens once delivered his, though Atkinson has a game-plan more sophisticated than Dickens's". This is Atkinson's best book to date, and she is as worthy as Mantel for the Prize.
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Daily Telegraph

“
She never ducks the sorrows of loss and human cruelty but an optimistic exuberance keeps coming through...This is, without doubt, Atkinson's best novel since her prizewinning debut Behind the Scenes at the Museum...A ferociously clever writer...a big, bold novel that is enthralling, entertaining and experimental...I would be astonished if it does not carry off at least one major prize.
”

“
Life After Life would be very good even if it was simply about the troubles of an early 20th century family and followed a less ambitious, more linear path. Yet it is more than that: a novel that makes you think deeply about the forks of your own life, the truth about dreams and deja vu and the grander scheme of time itself.
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Tom Cox, Sunday Express

“
Highly readable...her description of the Blitz is a tour de force.
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Mail on Sundey

“
Her very best...a big book that defies logic, chronology and even history in ways that underscore its author's fully untethered imagination...exceptionally captivating.
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Janet Maslin, New York Times

“
Electric..very special indeed...extraordinary...tangible and vivid...The paths are endless, but each so affecting that we long to keep this character alive and moving forward.
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Australian Women's Weekly

“
No writer alive makes for better company on the page—knowing, funny, and prodigally inventive… ..Literary and entertaining all at once, Atkinson is a sophisticated artist who also can keep you up well past bedtime, and that double-barreled talent is on display as never before in Life After Life.
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Daily Beast

“
Possibly Atkinson's biggest triumph
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Metro

“
Atkinson imbues her family saga with a fluid sense of time and a vivid sense of history at its most human level. A dizzying and dazzling tour de force.
”

Mail on Sunday (Summer Reading)

“
Eccentric and daring...incredibly inventive, and her tricks with time,space and reality are dazzling.
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Kate Saunders, The Times (Summer reading)

“
Brilliant...Frequently heartbreakingand entirely thrilling.
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TIME

“
Marvellous...spellbindingly done.
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Wall Street Journal

“
There are a few books that are so enjoyable that you slow down when you’re reading them, trying to delay the inevitable moment of completion…a voice that is both idiosyncratic and wise, one that sees the world in a distinctive, dark, but oddly consoling way….One of the remarkable things about Life After Life is the way that formal experimentation is combined with a consistently involving plot…Atkinson’s name is conspicuously absent from the Man Booker longlist. I find myself wondering whether Austen would make the lists if she were alive today.
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Sarah Crompton, Daily Telegraph

“
This is great
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Salman Rushdie, The Times

“
One of those fantastical novels that tells us more about the realities of being human than most realist novels do…the most thrilling and moving experience fiction has to offer this year.
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TIME (Top 10 Fiction Books of Year)

“
Kate Atkinson's audacious novel plays a virtuoso game with the nature of fiction...her best book to date and a worthy winner of a Costa Prize.
”